The war in Asia had its roots in the early 1930s. Japan had expansionist aims in Eastern Asia and the Western Pacific, especially in Indochina. In July of 1940 the United States placed an embargo on materials exported to Japan, including oil in the hope of curbing Japanese expansionism. Nevertheless, tensions remained high in Asia, and only increased in 1939 when Germany ignited World War II with an invasion of Poland. America's determination to remain isolated changed abruptly following Japan's 'surprise attack" on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Military strategists and politicians poured the majority of American war effort into Europe, and before the United States could fully mobilize, most of South-East Asia had fallen to Japan, including the Philippines. Slowly, the United States recaptured the many small islands invaded by Japan, including Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Tarawa, Saipan,

General Marshall and Secretary of War Stimson convinced Truman to set an invasion of the island of Kyushu for November 1945. Truman knew of the ferocious fighting currently taking place in the Pacific, and naturally had a desire to minimize what he felt would inevitably be a long, bloody struggle. Stimson, Truman and others believed the invasion of the Japanese mainland would be extremely costly, and therefore embraced the bomb as a military weapon whose use was fully condoned and never questioned. Truman's feelings that the bomb was a necessary military weapon can be seen in his diary on 25 July 1945, in which he recorded that he had told "Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use the atomic bomb so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. On Page 71 of Prompt and Utter Destruction, president Truman's diary entry says, "We will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance."

In hindsight it appears as if there existed five major alternatives to the dropping of the atomic bombs: a non-combat demonstration, a modification of the demand for unconditional surrender, a pursuit of "Japanese peace feelers," awaiting Soviet entry into the war and lastly continuing conventional warfare--aerial

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Approximate Word count = 902
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)